For Fay Weldon, a good writer does not always need to conclude his story on a happy tone to satisfy his reader. "The writers, I believe, who get the best and most lasting response from readers are those who provide a happy ending through moral development. By happy endings I don't mean mere happy events - a wedding or last minute event. rescue from death – but a kind of spiritual reevaluation or moral reconciliation, even with oneself, even after death. » Moby Dick and The Joy Luck Club leave a lasting impression on the reader because, although each novel's resolution is not necessarily happy, a spiritual reevaluation or moral reconciliation is ultimately achieved. In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab faces death as moral penance, and in The Joy Luck Club, Jing-Mei Woo finds spiritual resolution in fulfilling his mother's destiny. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayCaptain Ahab, the leader of the Pequod whaling expedition, was aptly named after an Israelite king who worshiped idols and brought the wrath of God upon himself. . There is no small connection between Ahab and his namesake - Ahab, in the same way as the ancient king, makes an idol of the whale, Moby Dick. His desire for revenge against the creature that gave him an ivory leg turns into a powerful and all-consuming obsession. The first time he addresses his crew, he informs them that their quest is not commercial: their objective is to kill the white whale. "Death to Moby Dick! God will hunt us all, if we do not pursue Moby Dick until he dies!" (165) From this moment on, Ahab, like "a maddened madman," (166) pursues the whale relentlessly - "he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to this one passion." (210) He disregards the warnings of others and is filled with arrogance, or, as Ishmael calls it, "fatal pride." Not only is Ahab filled with great pride as he makes himself a tyrant over his ship - "There is a God who is Lord of the earth, and a Captain who is master of the Pequod", he says ( 471) - but he does not heed any of the divine signals to give up his mad quest. He receives many signs from heaven to give up, but he ignores each of them and reprimands the man who begs him to. "God is against you, old man!" (501) said one of his men. "All the good angels are harassing [you] with warnings: what more do you want?" will not be warned He is determined to capture Moby Dick, whom he sees as a representation of evil And, indeed, the whale is portrayed as a malignant, inscrutable and seemingly omnipotent force – but that in no way excuses him. The arrogance and cruelty exercised by Ahab At one point, the captain of a passing ship begs him to help him search for his lost son, but Ahab coldly refuses. “I won’t,” he said, “Even now I’m wasting time.” (523) Ahab really seems to be a madman. The story of Ahab, at times, seems to be quite parallel to the story of Jonah, told earlier in the novel in a sermon by Father Mapple. Jonah ignores God's words and flees from him, just as Ahab fled to the sea in pursuit of Moby Dick, ignoring all the warnings. But unlike Jonah, Ahab does not repent. He too is defeated by the whale, but God does not deliver him as he does Jonah. If Ahab had shown humility or heeded the warnings given to him, he might have survived his encounter with Moby Dick. Buthe is not at all humble: “I never saw him kneel,” Stubb says of Ahab. (229) Due to Ahab's pride and his mad, all-consuming passion to hunt Moby Dick which causes him to lose all sense of identity and even humanity, he faces divine punishment. He meets his demise by means of the one thing he sought to destroy, the great whale. Although it's not a happy ending to the story, it's still a conflict resolution, and it leaves the reader satisfied. Captain Ahab ultimately earns what he deserves: his arrogance and recklessness lead him to the appropriate punishment. Both his death and the whale's victory constitute a kind of moral and spiritual reconciliation with history. The fact that his death took place after a three-day journey is also significant - this can be compared to the three days during which Jesus traveled from his crucifixion to his resurrection, or found his spiritual retribution. Ahab's punishment at the end of the three days is not resurrection, but death. The Joy Luck Club is quite a different story from Moby Dick, but it also ends in spiritual reconciliation. Throughout the novel, the main conflict is the lack of understanding between Chinese mothers who were born and raised in China and who experienced great suffering, and their daughters raised in the United States who never experienced real suffering. This theme is summarized at the beginning of the first book, “Feathers from a Thousand Miles Away,” which opens with a short story about a Chinese mother coming to America. She buys a swan and sails across the ocean, dreaming of the better life she will give her daughter. “No one will despise her... And there, she will always be too full to swallow the slightest sorrow!” (3) The woman intends to give her daughter the swan as a symbol of her hopes - but the swan is taken away and she is left with only a feather. The mother wants to give the pen to her daughter, but she fears that her daughter will not understand its meaning: she grew up “swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow”. (3) This story highlights the theme that runs through the entire novel - the gap in understanding between mothers and daughters, and the inability of daughters to understand their mothers' pasts. In all the stories told by the mothers, Suyuan Woo, An-Mei Hsu, Lindo Jong and Ying-ying St. Clair, the emphasis is on the honor and respect they each had for their own mothers. An-Mei describes a scene she witnessed when she was young, when her exiled mother was returning home to An-Mei's grandmother's deathbed. An-Mei's mother cut a piece of flesh from her own arm to put it in her grandmother's soup, in an attempt to cure her mother according to an ancient Chinese tradition. “This is how a daughter honors her mother,” says An-Mei. (41) "This is how I came to love my mother. How I saw my true nature in her. What was under my skin. In my bones." (40) This is the type of love, honor and respect that Chinese mothers expect in their relationships with their own daughters. But because their daughters were born and raised in America, a divide grew between them. Not only did they speak different languages, but they lived completely different lives and had completely different understandings. The women in the novel must struggle to understand each other. “We are lost, she and I, invisible and unseen, unheard and inaudible, unknown to others,” Ying-Ying says of her relationship with her daughter, Lena. (64) The girls' inability to understand their mother's past is highlighted when Waverly makes the mistake of telling her mother that she is from Taiwan. "I'm not from Taiwan!...I was born in China, in Taiyuan," said the.